Would You Take Your Kid to a Swine Flu Party?
If you paused for even a moment to consider the answer to that question, please read on. The answer should be a resounding, “No.”
As normally intelligent commentators like Bill Maher groundlessly sound off against the vaccine, the Internet is abuzz with reports of potential swine flu parties.
There was some idle chatter about such parties over the summer, but that chatter has now devolved into widespread planning. Although none of these ill-advised parties appears to have taken place so far, scores of parents are debating the wisdom of bringing their children to the home of an infected child. The thinking is that if a child contracts the virus now, he will be protected if swine flu returns in a more virulent form later on.
This may seem like a commonsense approach, but health experts are clear that this thinking is dangerously flawed. According to a flu expert from Cornell University, “This is like the Middle Ages, when people deliberately infected themselves with smallpox. It’s vigilante vaccination — you know, taking immunity into your own hands.”
The H1N1 virus is too little understood to risk deliberating infecting anyone–particularly children, who (along with the elderly) are most at risk for serious complications associated with the virus. According to The New Yorker, “The new H1N1 virus is similar to seasonal flu in its severity. In the United States, influenza regularly ranks among the ten leading causes of death.”
There’s one way to ensure that your child is protected against this potentially fatal illness, and it’s certainly not exposing her to it; instead, you could get her vaccinated. Then you can make merry at all the swine flu parties you want.
Photo: newsobserver.com
If swine flu returns in a more virulent form, it seems likely it will also have mutated enough that having had the current form won’t necessarily be protective (there’s a reason they have to change the vaccine every year).
I hav e never understood Chickenpox parties either. Having Chickenpox prety much guarantees you will develop painful, debilitating Shingles later on in life. I would never do that to my child. When I worked in healthcare I watched people in their 40′s have to be put in the hospital on morphine drips for the eagonizing pain when they had an outbreak of Shingles.
By the way, experts seem to agree that the ‘elderly’ will be among the least affected, unless they have a compromised immune system. That’s what has been reported every where that I’ve read the details on swine flu. It’s the3 regular brand of flu where the recommendation is that elderly persons get the current vaccine.
I have to say that I would not call Bill Maher “normally intellegent”. I’ve commented on this before, but he is against women breastfeeding in public (although he says we should be less prudish about nudity in other forms, and that we should live a healthy lifestyle in order to prevent disease), and he has said that chemotherapy does not work and that people with cancer should go overseas for “alternative treatment”. Sorry about ranting on this, but people need to see that he really is not very reasonable.
I can’t believe that people would expose their children to a disease on purpose when there is a vaccine out there. I’m not sure how someone’s mind would work to think this was a good idea.
Ali, really? That’s how chickenpox works? I didn’t know that it increased the likelihood of shingles. We definitely had a chickenpox party with my cousins as a kid — shingles would be just one more reason to dread getting old! Yikes.
1) “This may seem like a commonsense approach…” Um, or not. Seems ignorant.
2) “As normally intelligent commentators like Bill Maher…” I’d say that about 50% of the population would agree with that statement.
3) “…children, who (along with the elderly) are most at risk for serious complications associated with the virus” Not actually true. People in their early twenties are at more risk for complications from H1N1 than the elderly.
I have had shingles. Absolutely horrible, like being bitten by fire ants every day for six weeks. Having chicken pox as a child doesn’t guarantee you will get shingles as an adult, but, yeah, you have to be exposed to the live virus at some point to develop shingles or its incredibly even worse cousin, which I think is called HPN.
you can get shingles at any point when you immune system is compromised, like post partum or while undergoing chemo, not just when you are old, too, chilaura
uhm, also, it should be noted that just because your kid gets the vaccination, you shouldn’t feel free to “make merry at all the swine flu parties you want”, you should still avoid exposure…duh
People are idiots.
What Manjari said.
Not a chance. A party does not garantee that your child will get a mild case. Children have died from this, it is not okay to willingly expose them to a life-threatening illness.
Of course NOT..even if they say “Can’t HARM” I don’t want to gamble my Son’s health..
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[...] might have heard by now that some families are deliberately exposing their kids to H1N1 in the hopes of building up an immunity to the virus while it is in a relatively mild form and few [...]